


And Me Without A TARDIS

by downthepub (Finnspiration)



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Happy Ending, Low Heat, M/M, Some angst, Time Travel, UST, feelings and such
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23399290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finnspiration/pseuds/downthepub
Summary: Peter's feelings for Nightingale have started becoming complicated and embarrassing.  He tries for avoidance, but it's not doing the trick.  Before he can resolve it, a magical explosive devise flings him back in time to post-war London, where he meets a younger and far less confident Nightingale, who is still reverberating with the traumas of war.
Relationships: Peter Grant/Thomas Nightingale
Comments: 28
Kudos: 97





	And Me Without A TARDIS

**Author's Note:**

> UST, Time travel, some angst, M/M, low heat, feelings and such, happy ending

  
  


_ Half the night he longed to die, _ _   
_ _ Now are sown on hill and plain _ _   
_ _ Pleasures worth his while to try _ _   
_ _ Ere he longs to die again. _

_ -A. E. Housman, “Spring Morning” _

  
  


When I trotted up to the tech cave, I found Nightingale asleep on the chaise-lounge with Sky Sports still blaring on the television. I considered tossing a blanket over him so he'd stay warm, but decided against it. If he woke up, we'd both be embarrassed. Besides, it was Molly's job to fuss over himself, not mine.

I couldn't help standing there a moment and looking at him, though. Sometimes a sentimental fondness for my governor overcomes me. I'm only human. 

Sometimes he seems nearly my age, and other times he seems so fragile I just want to wrap him up, put him somewhere safe, and protect him from all further storms and blows of the universe. 

He'd told me to call him Thomas once, and I couldn't do it then, but I'm a bit older now, and it's not quite so intimidating to be on a first name basis with my boss. 

I'm still testing it out, you understand: and I started it as something of a way to tease him, calling him  _ Thomas _ to take the wind out of his sails. But the sparkle of delight in his eyes when I called him by his first name made me want to keep calling him that for an entirely different reason. Making him smile is a lot more fun that getting his goat. 

Nightingale is a bit enigmatic at times, but really, he's become a much more open book to me, now that we've worked together for so long. Being a teacher was never an easy role for him. Nor was being a boss. He worked hard at it, but he was, I think, often lonely and insecure, with all that responsibility on his shoulders weighing heavily.

The magic stuff was never a problem for Nightingale. He was particularly skilled that way, although I'm sure he would say it was merely hard work and practice. He never lacked confidence about anything magical. It was navigating everything else that wore him down sometimes.

I know he's glad I'm not his apprentice anymore, and that I've proceeded up the ranks to be a bit more his equal. 

It’s hard for him, carrying it all. Knowing I can take on more and more of the responsibility and oversight these days seems to give him a great deal of relief. Not that I’d have believed that in the beginning—or been anything but scared out of my wits by the idea. Back then his suits and his manners and his brilliant magic had me convinced he had it completely together. Not that he was a vulnerable mess of insecurities, PTSD, and sometimes downright terror. 

When it comes down to it, Thomas Nightingale, my governor, boss, friend and ally, was never meant to be in the position he holds today. He took it up because he was too conscientious to walk away, and there was no one else to do it. Everyone else was worse off than him, dead, or dying in one way or another. He might have walked away and died himself, if there’s been anyone else willing to take on the work, uphold the traditions, and look after London. 

I’m very glad he didn’t.

London, I think, has kept him alive.

Sometimes I think he’s the  _ genius loci _ of some aspect of London (London's magic, maybe?), that the city itself took him on, and that’s why he stopped aging, why he changed back to a younger, stronger man, and why he seems to know so much about the city, about everything, really. 

I think London needed him, and chose him, because he was willing and he had nothing left to lose. The way the river chose Mama Thames, the way magic seems to choose people sometimes.

But what do I know? I might not be an apprentice anymore, but that doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about magic.

I don’t like thinking about that time in his life, though, as when he had nothing to lose. If he seems sad sometimes now, it’s not that depth of sadness, of not even wanting to live. Having me to pester him with questions was good for him, whatever he says about the subject. I helped him re-engage with the modern world, and get out of his shell a bit, if only in self-defence. 

Teaching me was, as I’m sure he’d tell you, quite the challenge. 

I still don’t concentrate on any one thing for very long, but I’m fucking  _ amazing _ at magic. I can hold spells in my mind for as long as I need to, even when a dozen other things are going through my mind. It’s not the sort of concentration that would work for everyone—multitasking to the extreme—but it’s the only sort that works for me, and once I worked that out, and actually put in the hours practicing it, my skill progressed faster than ever.

I’m still not his equal; I’m not sure I’ll ever be. But I’m closer than I ever dreamed I could get. The Nightingale that can walk into any situation with an unholy confidence in his magical ability is no longer just a distant dream and the man who has to rescue me all the time. He’s the one I walk into battle next to.

Not that we have many battles these days. London is, more or less, under control. I mean magically, of course: the city has her own ideas about life, constantly changing and dynamic to  _ build a better future _ . But we haven’t faced any faceless villains for a while, or racist rogue wizards bent on reaching Batman-bad guy status.

It is still just me and him, though. And Molly. And Abigail, when she was taking a break from college. She was definitely still interested in magic, but not with the obsession of her youth, and her father wanted her to get a good education first and grow up a little bit, especially when he learned just what an impulsive child could do to their brain on magic.

Nightingale had been the one to sit down and have that talk. He insisted it was a parent’s right to know the risks. He was very forthright, and Dr. Walid went along. I was angry at them for a bit, scaring off the other apprentice possibility. But I got over it. After all, as Nightingale told me very gently afterwards, it would interfere with the agreement to have a second apprentice.

I was sure he’d be taking her on in a year or so, though, if she was still interested. After all, I’d graduated, for all intents and purposes. We still worked together much the same way we always had, though more side by side and with a lot less “Focus, Peter” or “do your Latin homework.”

And when I saw the cracks, fears, flaws, and damage in Nightingale, it bothered me a lot less these days. I didn’t need him to be the perfect mentor and boss; it was even okay to call him Thomas sometimes.

Since he hasn’t aged in decades (and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t matured in a while either, whatever he says about it), it almost feels like I’m catching up with him, that instead of seeing a dapper and dignified man older than me, who leaves me a bit in awe, I see someone closer to my age, still handsome and old fashioned, but also quirky and vulnerable and a bit of a sports fiend, and a magical nerd who had his head in the clouds about pretty much every other area of study.

Anyway, seeing him asleep in the tech cave, I figured he hadn’t slept much last night and let him get on with it. I plugged into HOLMES and started uploading paperwork.

Sure enough, when the volume changed, he startled awake with a little gasp. I turned around quickly in my seat to see him looking around with a lost, scared look on my face. He saw me watching and covered it quickly, back to his bland “nothing to see here” expression that used to fool me.

The volume change had been with a commercial break, and sounded a bit like an explosion. I thought guiltily that I could have muted the television.

“Peter,” said Thomas, and turned his startled movements into a smooth stretch. I didn’t let myself focus on the pull of the shirt stretching across his chest because really, that was none of my business. It was just such an intimate pose, him all stretched out like that, slim and gray-eyed, handsome as an old movie actor, and far too vulnerable and open to me. 

It made my chest a little tight sometimes, and it was weird: no denying that.

Sometimes being around Nightingale lately was a bit like growing up all over again—the weird, mixed-up part. One day you’re a little kid and your mum’s friends are all just that, ladies she knows, and your cousins are just your cousins, and it doesn’t really matter whether they’re related to you or not, and then one day you wake up and there’s that one friend of your mum that you quite fancy, and the cousin where it suddenly matters a whole fucking lot if you’re actually related to her or not, and a bunch of other things you suddenly notice that make you feel like a total pervert.

Nightingale had been giving me some of those feelings lately, and it was just as surprising as when some of mum’s friends had turned hot and I’d had _those_ _sorts_ of dreams about a cousin. It's that particular, shocking awareness that you don’t have the standards you thought you had—if you’d ever thought about it at all before—where age and closeness isn’t really a factor turning you off someone, and your dick knows what it wants, even if it’s completely inappropriate and can never happen.

I never did try it on with my cousin, and I certainly never did anything about the crush on my mum’s hot friends, but it was there, tormenting me, in the background for a few years. I’d thought I’d gotten over being surprised by who I could be attracted to since growing up, and actually having relationships, and learning more about what I liked in practice as well as theory. But nope: still revelations, still those awkward feelings for someone where there was no way it was going to happen, and if it did we’d probably hate each other in the morning.

So that trusting look he gave me made me want to look away sometimes lately, like I was letting him down or something. Thomas—Nightingale—trusted me. He confided in me. He let down his hair around me, as much as he did around anyone, and he trusted me to carry half the load of London’s magical policing needs. More than half, when he was on bed rest for some new injury or infection or other.

Thomas was the sort of man who pushed himself till he couldn’t go anymore and then had to be ordered to bed by doctors and an angry Molly. It wasn’t that he was aging, just that a certain weakness followed him around sometimes, and, especially in the bad weather, he was prone to infection, just as Dr. Walid had warned all those years ago.

It made me really upset with him sometimes, when he pushed too hard, and he would get quite meek about it with both me and Molly getting pissed off with him at the same time. But a truly meek (as well as coughing and ill) Nightingale is not easy to take, and neither of us could stand it for long. Molly would always start coddling him and give up on her version of the silent treatment, and of course I’d go and sit on the end of his bed and consult with him about cases and show him little magic tricks I was perfecting—the showy, sensational and pretty sorts of spells that I use to impress these days. I’m always inventing new bits of magic that are perfect to awe rather than do damage, little light shows and miniature fireworks I can hold in my hands, things like that. I like using magic to impress and awe rather than hurt and fight. I learned what I had to for combat, and it's awesome...but so is more intricate, delicate magic. Community policing at its finest. 

Now that he’s worked out I actually know what I’m doing and I’m not going to blow my brain up with magic, he quite likes my variations and inventions.

Anyway I’m sure he’ll never learn his lesson about pushing himself too hard, if it’s up to us to teach him. It’s impossible to stay upset with him for long, or deny him much of anything when he’s poorly. He never talks about the PTSD stuff, but sometimes he gets this drawn, pale look on his face, and his eyes are far away and miserable. That’s when I most wish I could help him, could just fix it somehow.

“Peter,” said Nightingale now, his voice gruff with sleepiness. “Have I kept you from the television? My apologies.”

“I had to do this paperwork anyway.” I turned back to the monitor in the vain hope that the urge to jump up, walk over, and kiss his upturned face would go the fuck away.

I sensed but didn’t see him frown. The chaise-lounge creaked as he sat up. “Everything all right?”

“Yep. Fine and dandy.” I hit a few more keys and finished up my report, trying to tune out those intrusive thoughts. I almost jumped when I noticed, a few moments later, that he was standing beside me silently watching.

“Pulling a Molly on me, boss?”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were so entirely engaged.” He looked down at me, his brows crinkling as he tried to work me out. “Are you certain everything’s all right, Peter?” His soft gray eyes were worried. Despite all he’d seen and done, the man never seemed to really grow hard. I suppose that was one of the things I liked best about him. He still cared; he still didn’t want to hurt people.

He was, at his heart, gentle, and I’d come to appreciate that even more than his Tiger-tank-destroying abilities as I grew older. It’s very hard to stay compassionate and gentle when you see as much as we do. Every cop faces that challenge, sees the way they change with the hard knocks of the job, and I think it’s probably worse for magical cops like us. But somehow, Nightingale never changes. He’s still his gentle self, awkward sometimes, caring, quite, scrupulously polite, and sometimes with echoes of the cheeky schoolboy he must have once been. 

My chair creaked as he leaned on the back of it. Inwardly, I winced. Did he have to be so close to me? His  _ signare _ rolled off him, as well as the feeling of being so close I could feel the warmth of him, and perhaps even his breath on the back of my neck. He really was too close.

“Peter, you’ve never quailed to inform me previously when I had offended you, or crossed into rudeness with something I’ve said or done. I like to think I’ve always been open to change, where necessary. I hope you won’t hold back now.”

“It’s fine, boss,” I said, distractedly tapping at the keys. 

“I haven’t done anything, then?” said Nightingale. “I could have sworn you were annoyed with me for some reason.”

“I’m not.” My palms were sweaty, and I was too much of a coward to turn around and look at him right now, meet those curious bird-bright eyes so soft and open to me. He really wasn’t supposed to affect me this way.

“Oh,” said Nightingale, and I wished it didn’t tug at my heart to hear him downcast and disheartened. “Of course. I suppose I was wrong. Very well. I shall leave you to it. See you at dinner, Peter.” 

For all that his tone was bluff and upbeat, I could tell he was a little hurt, as well as ashamed. He really did get embarrassed too easily. 

But I couldn’t exactly help with that at the moment.

I may have grunted something in reply, but I couldn’t face him. I guess I was a coward. I knew he wanted reassurance, to feel like we were a bit more equal again, that I wasn’t mad at him. But instead I let him leave, and hunched over the computer and tried to shut everything else out.

Why did my subconscious have to go and decide to fancy him for? He was an old white man, and my boss, nominally. He’d spent years teaching me, nagging me to focus, saved my arse...and he was old enough to be my granddad, or even great-granddad. He certainly wasn’t someone I should want to kiss. Or do other things with. I needed to get my head on straight. Literally.

At dinner we both played nice, I pretended I wasn’t distracted and irritable, and he pretended his feelings weren’t hurt. We talked about any number of things, as usual. It was still easy to talk to him, always had been. He’s always been an interested audience in what I have to say, and too polite to tell me to shut up, unless he was couching it in the language of “focus.” Even that he doesn’t do anymore.

He didn’t ask again what was wrong, and I sure as hell didn’t volunteer anything. That’s the sort of confession I didn’t think either one of us would recover from. 

#

Over the next few days we let a subtle distance crop up between us. 

We both did it; it wasn’t just me. At least that’s what I told myself. I knew very well he was following my lead, as he’d done in the past, with regards to pushing past that subtle professional boundary that was mostly in my head. 

From the beginning, Thomas had tried very hard to be a teacher, to be what I needed in a boss. But he’d also shown signs of wanting to move past that, sharing the burden of the Folly, telling me I could call him Thomas, wanting to be part of TV and pizza nights, but backing off when I was secretly appalled at the thought of hanging out with my boss.

He was doing the same thing now, and I knew damned well he was doing it for me, but hanged if I could get past this. I knew it would go away in time; I knew that. I just needed some space, and I couldn’t get it with him so close, tormenting me with his sudden hotness that had crept up on me and even now irritated me no end.

I didn’t want to notice stuff like that about my boss. I felt like a creep.

It’s not like I hadn’t had the occasional crush on a bloke before; mostly when I was growing up, and mostly I hadn’t done anything about it. But Thomas Nightingale was my boss, had been my teacher, and more than that, he was my friend. It wasn’t a great idea to mack on the friend/mentor/coworker you were probably going to spend the rest of your life around. It was just...wrong.

But he still featured in my dreams more than I liked, and I found myself getting pissed off with him a little bit when my libido kept sitting up and taking notice when he did anything. For pity’s sake, lifting a teacup shouldn’t be hot. And especially not on Nightingale. 

It wasn’t his fault—wasn’t like he was doing anything different, or on purpose—but it still pissed me off. I shouldn’t have to be dealing with this. I was grown now, things shouldn’t keep changing. If anything, I’d thought my sex drive had settled down to a more comfortable level, where I wasn’t constantly thinking about sex or hot women, it was just nice when something happened, and I was OK if it didn’t. Now, surprise surprise, the funny trick played on Peter Grant by the universe: yep, your libido is calming down...except around your fucking  _ boss. _

So we stayed away from each other a little more, and he didn’t ask, and I didn’t volunteer. I know he was a little bit sad about it, because I can just tell what he’s feeling these days a lot more than I could in the past, and also Molly’s glares at me were a bit of a giveaway, but honestly I was all about surviving, I couldn’t fix it for him, I just needed to get through this rough patch and deal before I could try to smooth things over with him.

Not that I didn’t want to. But the thought that smoothing things over might turn into smoothing back his hair and kissing him...well that made me run screaming from the entire thing. Because I was damned sure he wouldn’t forgive or forget such a thing, and I’d rather he was a little disappointed in me than absolutely livid or disgusted with me, not wanting to be around me at all anymore.

Sure, he probably wouldn’t kick me out of the Folly or his life—he'd had too much old-school politeness drilled into him back in the day—but I didn’t think it would be an easy or fun time for either one of us, for at least a few years. And I really wanted to avoid that.

We avoided each other a bit more, I ate out a bit more, rather than eating with him. It was easier to concentrate on food, for one thing, when he wasn’t right there in my face being elegant. And we got on with things, the way we’d always done, come tragedy or elation, life changes, horrors, betrayals, dangers, sickness, and gunshot wounds: we simply got on with things.

London needed protection, the Folly always had some work to be done. So we did it. We carried on.

#

We were scheduled to check out a possible ghostly disturbance that might or might not be a demon trap at a nearby construction site. Ghosts and demon traps aren’t a joke to me, anymore than UXBs. Nine times out of ten it might be a false alarm, but that tenth time you could have a really bad shit go down if you don’t respond seriously and promptly.

Unfortunately, Nightingale was in bed with a cough that morning, so I had to go alone. He was painfully apologetic about it, around the cough that was so deep it hurt to hear. 

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Peter. I know you’ll handle it superbly, though.” He looked up at me from the bed, his soft gray eyes almost pleading with me to forgive him and not hold a grudge. He held out his hand, and I couldn’t refuse; I took it. It was slim and dry and slightly too warm. “I  _ am _ sorry, Peter,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t saying about today, or getting sick, or anything like that. He meant about whatever he’d supposedly done to make me want to get away from him. It hurt to see him so apologetic and earnest when really, he hadn’t done anything; he’d just existed. And I certainly didn’t want him to stop that.

I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what he meant. Not today. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just working out some shit, Thomas. It’ll pass.”

His grin was genuine, though a shadow of its usual strength. “I’m glad to hear that. I can be very patient, you know.” His eyes gleamed. “But I hope you know I would never hurt you on purpose.”

It was all I could do not to bend and kiss the back of his hand, like some kind of shitty knight. Instead, I gave it an awkward squeeze, muttered something reassuring, and got the hell out of there. I could feel him watching me as I went, relieved, but still trying to figure it out.

I was still thinking about it when I got to the construction site. They’d been waiting; I’d taken my newest car, rather than Thomas’s Jag. The Jag needs a little bit of coddling these days; she’s seen some hard wear and tear with a few really difficult years we had there. 

Every few years, I get myself a car and trade in the old one. Sometimes I go all out and get a new one; sometimes I buy a sweet used one I’d never be able to buy new. Nightingale enjoys them as well, though I doubt he’d ever admit it. He likes to fiddle with the instruments, of all things, and make remarks about cars these days being more complicated than airplanes. But he enjoys it. He’s never taken to the internet, texts only as a matter of necessity, and does not particularly enjoy all the “bells and whistles” on anything else modern. But if you ever need your car clock set, or your voice activation system set up, ask Nightingale. It’s a hobby he’s taken to rather late, but quite cheerfully.

I got to the building site, and there were a lot of pissed off looking cops waiting for me (traffic had been bad, unsurprisingly), and a lot of builders who didn’t look bothered at all. Always nice to have a break and still be paid for it. I hopped out of the GTO and headed over. 

A few words with the officer in charge of the scene, a quick questioning of the builders who’d found the device, and I headed over to take a look for myself, staff discreetly in hand. 

I swear to you I wasn’t distracted, whatever anyone says. I was paying perfectly close attention.

And still, the first vague probe of it, with my magic sense, and it exploded in my face.

#

Dying’s a funny business. It doesn’t always go like you think it will.

For me, apparently, dying meant a long hallucination between “bomb goes off” to “Peter breathes his last and brain death sets in.” The hallucination could have been a lot more fun, too.

This is what happened, or that I thought happened.

The explosion went off in my face, silent and invisible, kicking me out of time and into another place. It wasn’t like any demon trap or incendiary device I’d ever witnessed, heard about, or read up on. 

As far as I could tell, I was the only one who caught the blast. It kicked me out of time and I landed quite hard in rubble from another era.

It was the middle of the same street, though it took me a few minutes to work that out, dazed as I was. I picked myself up and began to wander, wondering if I was dead, daydreaming, or what. None of the builders or coppers were around; the street had that bombed out after-the-war-before-the-repair look you see in old pictures, except this time it was in Technicolor and I was tripping over some bricks in what had once been an industrial-looking building. Far off, kids screamed and dogs barked, but I didn’t hear a lot of the ever-present London traffic.

Not to say the air; there was a heavy pall of coal smoke that seemed to linger and cling to everything, and as I stumbled along, I coughed at the unfamiliar taste of it. A thin-faced white woman wearing a faded A-line skirt with her hair tied up in a scarf cast me a quick, suspicious look as I stumbled past where she was beating a rug on a clothesline. 

The street was ratty, older than it had been, and also less built up. I could see an outhouse behind one building, and there were a few scraggly trees here and there. In places, the buildings were whole, but clearly not yet gentrified, but there were gaps between them like rotten teeth, filled with rubble. It was strange to me, as I stumbled along trying to catch my breath and clear my ringing ears, that I felt comfortable placing myself in post-war England, simply from looking at the architecture. 

Nightingale would laugh. Then again he would probably have lived it. Be living it now. 

Was this a dream, a vision, something to see before dying—or had I been kicked into the past? It would really help if I knew which was the case.

My head felt quite funny, and I don’t remember much after that for a while. I know I wandered down several streets, and I don’t remember where I was heading, if anywhere at all, but there were a lot of broken streets and white people. I know I got some funny looks, and I remember distinctly feeling that I needed to get out of the street so people would stop looking at me. There was also the splitting headache.

I suppose even halfway to concussion, I can find my way around London, because the next thing I knew, I was leaning on the doorbell at the Folly. I had the feeling I shouldn’t fall asleep, although I was so tired I couldn’t help leaning against the door. It seemed as though I rang for a very long time.

And then there was someone at the door, and it was Nightingale after all, and for a moment the entire nightmare seemed to fade away, and it was just him and me, and I was safe again.

“Nightingale,” I said, and practically fell into his arms. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

It wasn’t exactly the dignified impression I meant to make, but since it was probably that or crack my face on the cobblestones, I’m glad he caught me.

He smelled of wool and tobacco and safety and himself. I didn’t catch his  _ signare _ just now, but he smelled like home. “Thomas.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” he said, as posh and polite as ever. 

“No, but you caught me, and that’s better.” I laughed, and that’s all I remember for a while.

#

When I woke up the surroundings were familiar but the bed was not. It was definitely the Folly, because the old stone building with its protections was comfortable and familiar around me. Molly was there, looking down at me with worried, distrustful eyes.

“Hello Molly,” I mumbled. Her eyes widened and she glided backwards. Apparently I wasn’t suppose to know her name. I didn’t feel well enough to sit up, but I looked around the room as far as I could without moving my head much. 

I had a splitting headache. I seemed to be wearing someone else’s dressing gown. And I was very thirsty indeed. “Do you have any water?” I croaked.

She served me, cautiously, as if I might leap up and attack her at any second. I recalled that she hadn’t trusted me very much in the beginning, and that was when Nightingale had, and there’d been a friendly little dog to ease my introduction. I tried to give her a smile, but from her reaction it probably came out as a grimace.

“Is he awake?” asked Nightingale, sounding very unsure of himself. He eased across the bedroom’s threshold as I was drinking water from a thick green glass with air bubbles in it.

The two of them watched me with surprisingly similar worried expressions. I got a good look at Nightingale for the first time since my arrival in this Doctor Who or hallucination scenario, and looking at him startled me more than anything since the moment I’d first arrived. Because he made it all seem real: he looked so very much like himself, and so very different at the same time. 

It wasn’t one thing that I could put my finger on to say “Aha, this is Thomas Nightingale before he aged up and then back down again.” I mean, his hair was similar, his eyes were still gray, his face had age on it but of about the same level as when I’d known him back in the future. And this was Nightingale we're talking about, so his  _ style _ was almost exactly the same. But there was something about the way he carried himself that made him seem young and uncertain. Obviously he was in his forties, which was still older than me, but he struck me as very young and very uncertain. His eyes were different, too. 

The sensitivity and kindness and wisdom in my Nightingale’s eyes were all very familiar to me. But these gray eyes held pain, fear, distrust, and shadows that made him seem half alive somehow, as if he was a shadow of the man I knew. I couldn’t help staring, and he stared back nervously, not seeming to know what to say. I nearly dropped the glass. 

I recognised something else about him: a certain frail, pale sort of look that he’d had after he’d gotten shot. It made him seem particularly vulnerable, and I wondered just how long after the war this was, and if he was still recovering from his wounds received in battle.

“Thomas,” I said, shocking myself as much as him by saying his first name.

He blinked several times, and got control of his mouth. “Yes, you’ve said that before. I’m afraid I should very much like to know who you are. Have we met?” He raised a brow in a creditable performance of haughty authority that was supposed to imply all sorts of superior knowledge. But I knew Thomas Nightingale: he was bluffing, and on very unsure ground.

“No, er, that is, not yet.” Dammit, I should have found some suitable lie. But I don’t, I can’t, lie to him. I never have. The best I’ve ever been able to do is avoid certain topics, or change the subject, or hide from him. And I know it’s the same for him. Thomas Nightingale doesn’t lie to his Starling. It simply isn’t how we work.

“But you know me. You know my name and Molly’s, and you knew your way here. And your clothing has the ring of...of magic about it. Tell me, good sir, are you a practitioner?” He seemed to be gaining strength as he spoke, reminding himself he had the authority to ask these questions and to be answered. He was probably not used to being the one in charge yet. It hadn’t sat easily on his shoulders even far in the future; it must've been a real struggle back in this day.

“I’m Peter Grant, and I’m a wizard, fully trained,” I told him, as firmly as I could. If he started thinking of me as an illegal practitioner, there could be no end of trouble. And whether this was a hallucination or not, (I was beginning to believe it wasn’t), I had to go for it and do my best now, to convince him so he wouldn’t kick me out. “There was an explosion, and it sent me back here to this time. I came to the Folly because I was hurt and didn’t know where else to go.”

My head still hurt quite a bit. I wondered if I should mention this.

The younger Nightingale processed this information slowly. I could see him trying to come to terms with it, and see how it affected anything, and if he dared believe me.

“From the future,” he said at last. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I knew about this place, and both of you, and the wards let me in. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

He clearly didn’t, but couldn’t think of a polite way to say so. I interrupted before he could oh-so-politely decide to kick me out.

“I really need some more rest, Thomas. My head’s killing me. If you’d let me sleep a bit more before you interrogate me.”

He blinked, jolted somehow. “Interrogate? No.” He shook his head quickly and took a step back, something passing across his face that made me think of PTSD and torture and horrid things. “I—I don’t.”

Molly hissed in distress, covering her mouth quickly. She looked from me to Nightingale, and back again, clearly feeling I was at fault for upsetting him.

“Ah—ah—come along, Molly. We should let the gentleman rest.”

Neither of them seemed to think I was actually a gentleman, but fair enough. It had been a long day, stuck in the past, and I hadn’t been awake for most of it. I drank the rest of the water, wondered how in the hell I was going to get home, and closed my eyes and slept.

The next time I woke up I felt a bit better, but I had to pee really badly. There was no one there, thankfully, and I managed to stumble out of bed (wearing a blue silk dressing gown with nothing underneath), and to the toilet on that floor, which was old fashioned but comfortably familiar. It was as clean as everything in the Folly, and the old fashioned plumbing worked, which was all I could have asked for in a loo just then.

I wanted to take a bath badly, but I was still wobbly, thirsty, and hungry, so I thought I’d better wait until I’d eaten and found some clothes, and was sure I was strong enough to climb back out. It would not suit any of us, I suspected, if I had to ask Molly for help. She might decide to end me there and put a stop to the pitiful interloper permanently.

I drank some more water, this time with my hands, and belted the dressing gown as best I could to gird my loins (I was still trying not to think about which one of them had undressed me), and headed back to my bedroom. 

Nightingale met me in the hall, when we almost walked into one another. He jumped back, looking even more surprised than I felt. Alarm was written all over his pale, gaunt face. I really wished he looked more like himself; it was disorienting to have him so familiar and so odd at the same time.

I leaned against the wall on my walk back to bed. I really hoped I didn’t have permanent brain damage. I’m not usually so weak after a knock on the head, and I’d walked the length of several streets to get here, at the least, so you’d think I’d be stronger, but the short trip had taken it out of me.

Nightingale backed off and watched me for a moment, his expression worried and torn, but at last he came to a decision, his politeness taking over, and he offered me an arm to help me back. I accepted. 

It was embarrassing to be this underdressed around him, and I kept wondering if he was the one who’d undressed me, and wishing they’d put me to bed in sooty clothes instead. But Molly would never have stood for that.

I could see him psyching himself up slowly to ask me more questions, but I let him take my time, so I could catch my breath and close my eyes for a few moments. At last I was ready, and I could tell he was, so I opened my eyes and saw him waiting there uncertainly.

“Er, Peter, is it?” he said politely.

“That’s Mr. Grant to you,” I said.

“Of course. Mr. Grant.”

I’d been teasing, but he couldn’t tell, I realized with a certain shock. He looked so gray and young and uncertain and raw, I wanted to make it easier for him suddenly. I smiled at him and patted at the edge of the bed, the way he did when I was welcome to sit on the end and talk to him. His brows startled upwards, and he stayed where he was, his look of nervous hesitation increasing. 

Well, that hadn’t worked. “Why don’t you tell me what you need to know and we’ll see if we can work out what happened?”

He nodded. “Yes. Er. You said you’re from the future. How far, might I ask? And what brought you here?” He cut himself off before he could start leading the witness, though I could see he had some more he wanted to say. I’d bet he was thinking of The Time Machine and wanted to ask me if there were any Morlocks where I came from. Also if everyone was black.

I hesitated, wondering if I needed to use any different words than I’d use to tell my Nightingale. But, well, he’d taught me everything I knew about magic, and by his own admission, its study hadn’t progressed much since the war. 

“What’s the current year?” I asked.

His turn to hesitate. “Why do you need to know that?”

“I thought you might like an estimate of how far in the future I’m from, rather than an exact date. You look like you’re going to faint if any more big surprises come down the pipe line.”

To my surprise, he flushed. Nightingale has pale skin, so it really showed up. “I’m perfectly all right,” he said rather angrily. “Simply tell the story as you remember it. If you do.”

Those seemed like fighting words, especially from him, but I ignored them. “All right. I’m from 2019.”

He drew in a sharp breath, but he didn’t faint. He blinked several times and gave me a tight nod and what was probably meant to be a smile but definitely reached more into grimace territory. “Go on.”

“I was at the Folly, and we got a call from the police about a possible haunting or demon trap. That was what we made of it, at any rate, so I went out to look. I drove, but it was close enough I probably should have walked, because of the traffic. When I got there, I had a visual confirmation of the metal device that had merited the call. It didn’t look like a bomb, but could have been an old demon trap. Standing well back, according to procedure, I started to probe at it very, very gently to see if I could tell what it was exactly...and it went off immediately. I ended up on the same street in the past—whatever year this is—with lots of buildings still destroyed from after the War. I wandered around feeling ill till I reached the Folly, the only safe place I could think of. My head still hurts quite a bit, and I’m still not certain if I’m dead, having a hallucination, or trapped in the past.”

He swallowed several times, blinked hard, and stared at me. “You weren’t in the war?”

“No, I’m too young.”

“But you know about demon traps, and—and you’ve been to the Folly. You know Molly...and...me?”

“I've met you both,” I said.

He looked slightly appalled, as if considering how old he’d be by then, or whether he’d be dead. I mustn’t tell him too much; I probably already had. I expected more questions, but he seemed to be stuck on something I’d said and couldn’t get past it. At last he said, “You must be hungry.”

“I am, and I’d like some clothes so I can take a bath. Is there anything I can borrow? I’m not fussy,” I added, because he looked alarmed again.

“I’ll—I’ll have Molly fetch something,” he said, backing out of the room as if he expected me to jump up and strip right away, and the prospect frightened him.

“And the food,” I reminded him. “But nothing too heavy, I’m not sure I could keep it down.”

He stood there a moment, blinking, nodding randomly, and then turned and fled. I heaved a sigh and closed my eyes again. It was going to be a long twentieth century if it went on like this.

#

Eventually, there was food, and I ate. There were some clothes that looked suspiciously like dead soldier’s forgotten uniforms. (I tried not to think about it.) I bathed and dressed, but I wasn’t steady enough to shave yet, and didn’t attempt it. I kept waiting for Thomas to return, but it took him a long time to get his courage up, and there was another nap and another meal in between.

To her credit, Molly took care of me very well. She still seemed unnerved by me, but didn’t skimp on the provisions, and made sure the blackout blinds on the windows were adjusted to let in just enough light to not make my head hurt worse, or shine in my eyes. It was thoughtful of her, and I made sure to thank her. She seemed alarmed at being addressed directly by me, and hurried out after that.

Thomas had clearly been doing some studying, and trying to get his confidence in place for dealing with me. He seemed slightly less alarmed this time, and his stride held the sort of fake confidence of a boy playing soldier. Since I knew very well he’d been a soldier, Mr. Tiger Tank Destroyer, the false confidence was rather from being the authority in the Folly, and having to decide what to do about me.

I wondered if part of his fear was about me being black. I hoped not, but I really didn’t know how quickly Nightingale had overcome the probable racism in his education in England’s White and Pleasant Land. It was hard to believe the Folly hadn’t been pretty damned racist, the way it had been pretty damned sexist. It was all white guys for a reason. It usually is.

“Mr. Grant,” said Nightingale, with effort, “I’ve been looking into—”

“You really can call me Peter. I was teasing.”

He blinked at me several times, then looked down at the book in his hand. Was he blushing again? I hoped not. It was painful to watch. “No. You were right. I don’t think we know one another well enough for first names. This should be professional. I was reading—” He had to clear his throat. “There is nothing in the records about time travel, er, traps.” He glanced up at me, and pushed his hair back nervously with one hand. “Did...er...the future Folly have information about that?”

“Not that I’ve ever read, but I haven’t been through the entire library.” Even though I’d had ten years to do so. Nightingale hadn’t been through it all, either, so I didn’t feel too bad about that. It was pretty damned huge, and there was always a lot of work to be done. I’m not sure if I could have managed it all even if we weren’t always running about and saving the day together. Some things are more important than reading every single book. Mental health, for instance.

“What do you propose to do once you are well enough to...to do magic? Do you have a way to go back to your own time?”

“I suppose I could try a police box,” I said.

He stared at me, not getting it. Though to be fair, I’m not sure if he’d have gotten it in the future, either. I’ve never managed to get him interested in Doctor Who.

I sighed. “Sorry. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to think very far ahead just now. I was hoping you’d have an idea.” I looked at him expectantly.

“Me? Why on earth would I have an idea? This is your time travel. Or farce,” he added, his mouth twisting bitterly. “You could be an enemy agent here to—to worm your way into the Folly.”

“Enemy agent? From where? I thought there weren’t any German wizards left after—after Ettersburg, and everything. Besides, would they be likely to be black?”

“Your negroid skin could be a clever disguise.”

I winced. “Just say black, okay? I know languages change, but...just say black.”

He gave a short, military nod. But he was distressed, I could feel it. He wasn’t just jerking me around with his suppositions. 

“Look, I’m not an enemy agent, okay? How could I know so much about the Folly, if I was?”

He shrugged, then examined his hands. “Maybe there is really good intelligence out there about us. I’m afraid now that you’re here, I can’t let you leave, just at the moment. I mustn’t have you communicating with anyone on the outside at the moment. I’m sure you understand. When, er, the others are here, they can help decide that you are who you claim to be.”

“Others?” I said blankly. “What others? I thought it was only you.”

He blushed scarlet. “It might, at the moment, be only myself and Molly, but I assure you this place is not unguarded, or forgotten.”

I stared at him a moment, but he couldn’t meet my gaze.

“I’d be glad to stay,” I said. “I’m definitely not fully recovered yet, and I wouldn’t feel safe anywhere but here.”

I thought of the evil practitioners who were even now probably beginning to weave their threads of discord and darkness through London. I thought of Simone and her “sisters” feeding off the living, and a dozen other things that were probably going on in the background. I wondered if I could have done anything about it, even if I hadn’t been so wobbly on my feet. Probably not. I’m fairly certain from Doctor Who that you aren’t suppose to change timelines, unless you want to get yourself or millions of civilians killed. Possibly both.

But maybe I’d changed things already by talking to Molly and Thomas so much. And maybe this was all still a hallucination from a dying man. I shuddered a little at the thought.

“Are you cold?” asked Thomas abruptly, moving forward jerkily, and then stopping just as quickly. There was something tormented and lost in his eyes, and I realized he was shivering a little bit, but probably not from chill. He was such a mess.

“I’m all right. I just hope I’m not dying or something.”

His pale face went almost as white as Molly’s at this, as if I’d truly frightened him. “I could call a doctor, I suppose. Do you…?” He floundered around, then nodded once to himself, backed out of the room, and hurried down the hall, his steps quick. He’d practically radiated neurosis and fear. I suppose people don’t get over losing all of their friends overnight. Or PTSD. Or being shot. Or being the only one left in charge when they hadn’t the disposition or desire for it.

Poor Thomas. He’d always seemed so together to me, even knowing there were things in his past as well as his present that just weren’t easy. 

He returned not long after with a doctor, who seemed to be humouring him rather than anything else. The medical man was something of a walking cliché, and could easily have played John Watson on a stage somewhere, with his mutton chop whispers and air of patient tolerance, not to mention his big battered Gladstone bag.

He looked surprised to see me, though, and stopped short. He looked at Thomas, and his mouth opened and shut once.

“Didn’t you believe me?” said Thomas testily, in the twitchy way of a man well on his way to paranoia about the medical establishment.

“You should always believe Thomas, you know,” I said, before he could reply “but I thought you were imagining it,” or “you didn’t say he was coloured.” I gave the doctor my friendliest smile to get off on the best foot possible.

He examined me in a rather archaic manner with lots of hums and ahhs, but he didn’t do anything overtly racist, and when he snapped his bag shut Thomas was watching him with an attentive, worried expression.

“Lots of bed rest, I think,” said the doctor. “And lots of good food. But of course, you never have trouble with that here.”

I thought of rationing, and wondered if Molly bought food on the black market. The two meals I’d eaten hadn’t exactly made me think of post-war restrictions.

Thomas shook the doctor's hand, declined any examination of himself, and seemed jittery and embarrassed about everything, especially when the doctor told him he mustn’t excite himself or overdo. “You’re still not in tiptop shape, Thomas,” he said in that old fashioned GP manner.

By the time he left I was almost as exhausted as Thomas looked.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Thomas, and turned smartly on his heel, and hurried off, probably to belatedly show the doctor out. 

Was it my imagination, or was Thomas Nightingale the younger version about one stressful experience away from a complete nervous breakdown—or psychiatric break, or whatever they call it these days?

The thought of Thomas in a mental hospital, sectioned for madness, made me shudder. He wouldn’t do well there. Probably people would call even his magic a sign of madness. He’d been hurt enough. He really needed to work on not acting twitchy around medicos.

I thought a lot about our situation in between resting, eating Molly’s cooking (even more old fashioned than it used to be, and with no signs of austerity). By the time Thomas Nightingale visited me again, he’d gotten some of his nerves under control, and was doing a passable impression of the polite host. He carried some books with him. They were non-magic volumes. “I, er, thought you might relish the chance of something to read, assuming your head is feeling better.”

They looked like old fashioned nonsense to me, cheap popular novels and a volume on cricket, but I did my best to look grateful. I patted the edge of my bed again before I could remember not to, but this time he hesitated only a moment, then sat down, perching rather primly on the end so there was plenty of space separating us.

He had such beautiful eyes. I wished I could stop noticing that. If before it had been like fancying an older friend of my mum’s, now it felt like I was fancying a little brother of a good friend. The fact that he was still older than me right now just couldn’t seep through and dissolve the guilt.

“The doctor didn’t say I shouldn’t do any magic,” I said. “And I’ve been resting a lot. I wondered if you’d like me to show you some of the spells I know? Just...simple things, nonsense stuff, not violent at all.” I added that part quickly because he was looking a bit alarmed. “I know you could take me in a fight,” I added, unable to keep the affection from my voice. “Mr. Tiger Tank Destroyer.”

He definitely blushed, and looked away quickly, wiping a thumb across his mouth. “I’m not...I’m sure I’d never…”

“Oh, was that a different Thomas Nightingale?”

“No, of course not, I simply find it difficult to believe it would ever be something I’d brag about. What do I become, a doddering old man regaling youths with stories of his deeds, exaggerating right and left, making them think wartime is...pleasant? Or even bearable?”

So he did believe me about the time travel.

“No, no. And you never brag. You only told me when I asked.”

“I—I am still alive then?” He risked a look at my face, and whatever he saw there didn’t make him happy. “Why?” he said quietly, a note of agony in the single soft word. “Why would anyone want to—” He cut himself off abruptly, but didn’t look at me. He was staring at the wall, or rather, far into the past, and his pain, and the endless future stretching relentlessly before him.

I sat myself up, holding the spell in my mind, silent and intricate and beautiful. After I’d mastered the big stuff, the impressive stuff, I’d turned most of my study to intricate spells, wanting to understand what made them tick, how many orders you could pile up, etc. It was wonderful to have a spell you’d created yourself, that you knew was never going to be used to hurt anyone.

I opened my hand and said the word silently in my head, and showed him my tiny handheld fireworks. His attention was riveted from the moment he felt the spark of magic. He watched with fascinated bewilderment, and wonder. The light shone on his face, making him look younger and less tormented.

“Peter, that’s extraordinary,” he said, when at last I dropped the spell, closing my hand.

I grinned. “Thanks. I made it up myself.”

He looked startled from his awe by that. “Do you do that often? Invent spells—and survive?”

I shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice, and a good teacher.”  _ You _ , I wanted to say.  _ It’s you, you nervous rabbit. You’ve got it in you to be great, and you’re going to be _ . But of course I didn’t dare.

“Peter, er, how many are there, at the Folly, in, ah, your day?” He seemed embarrassed to be asking, and I could tell it mattered a lot to him.

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I'm sorry, Thomas, I don’t think I should tell you anything about the future. It could make a big mess of things. Even just being here could be a mess, you know. I’m not sure I am here—but if I am.”

“Must I call the doctor back?” he said.

I raised my hands in mock horror. “Oh, heaven forbid. Dr. Watson might give me some liver pills!”

He laughed. It was such a shock to me that I dropped my hands. For an instant, he’d looked young and alive, and so very pretty and sweet I could only stare.

He rose abruptly, and gestured awkwardly to the pile of books, and then hurried from the room, making me wish I hadn’t stared, that I’d said something. I really hoped he couldn’t see that I fancied him. I think Nightingale has a knack for closing his eyes to things he doesn’t want to know about, but I’m not sure he did back then...back here...back now, whatever this was.

And it was awkward and embarrassing enough when he was my friend and mentor, rather than this raw and wounded last wizard, barely holding himself together day by day. 

#

I got stronger pretty quickly after that, but took his wishes to heart and didn’t try to leave the Folly. To be honest, I was scared to. This wasn’t my London, I didn’t know it, and if I messed something up…

Although to be honest, the messing up seemed more likely here, the more time I spent with youngish Thomas. He gave up the pretence that he wasn’t the last wizard likely to be here. We didn’t talk about it.

He wanted me to teach him all of my pretty but useless spells (I showed him all of them, one time or another; he was so enchanted, and it did me good to see him smile), but I told him he wasn’t ready.

“You know you’re not fully recovered,” I told him, motioning to his chest. 

He put a hand quickly to the spot where he’d been wounded, an unconsciously protective gesture. “But I’m well enough to use magic.”

“We can’t know how much is safe, so I hope you’re not using it if you don’t have to.”

He managed to look guilty instead of boredly calm.

“Thomas, you can’t know how much is safe yet,” I lectured him. “In the future there’s a machine that can tell you if your brain is getting damaged by magic, but it doesn’t exist yet. Every risk you take could be deadly, until you’re strong enough to handle it again.” I thought of him killing tanks, destroying and rescuing and being his generally badass self with magic...and then coming home wounded and broken, losing more and more people, even after the devastation of that final battle.

Maybe in his worst moments he didn’t actually mind the thought of burning out, going fast.

“Please be careful, Thomas.”

He looked me in the eyes, and seemed to take what I said seriously. But he always wanted to see me do more magic. 

It was hard for him to remember to be aristocratic and authoritative and proper. I think he must have been very lonely. Somehow he would often end up curled up on the end of the bed, watching me make magic for him. I teased it out, careful and slow, entrancing him, enjoying the way he forgot himself in just watching, experiencing. I was skilled enough with my pretty little spells not to hurt myself, but I kept to a careful schedule just to be sure I didn’t overdo.

One evening we were whiling away the time, just chatting about this and that—him pondering the future of his favourite rugby teams, while I made a light show on the ceiling for him. Sometimes, Molly came and watched as well, but she never stayed long. Mostly I think she wanted to make sure I wasn’t hurting Thomas. She seemed unimpressed by small, prettified magic that couldn’t kill anyone. Or else just by me.

Thomas sighed a little and stretched out beside me all of the sudden, getting comfortable. That was a surprise, although he’d brushed against me once or twice by accident, aside from helping me back to bed (and probably, being the one to undress me), this was the closest he’d gotten.

It felt intimate in the narrow bed, and my spell faltered a bit as I forgot to breathe. I reminded myself this wasn’t my Thomas Nightingale—not really. This was his younger, sensitive, recovering self who still had quite a bit of shit to work through, and absolutely did not need a come on from me.

He looked across at me, so close I could have kissed him. “Why’d you stop?”

I focused on the ceiling, on the spells, on anything but my hardening dick. He was so slim and warm and real beside me, too close for my comfort, but apparently all right for his. He held one hand over his chest where the wound was, rubbing at it unconsciously the way he did sometimes when it was sore or the skin pulled weirdly. I'm sure he’d have stopped if he realized he was doing it.

“You’re so good at that,” he breathed in a quiet kind of awe. 

We watched for a few more minutes. My dick refused to unharden, but at least he didn’t notice, and I was able to maintain the spell.

“Thomas, what should I do? If no one else is coming—if it’s just me. How can I make it work? I’m not—” He had to clear his throat. “I’m not strong enough to do it all myself.”

That soft speech, it could have broken me if I wasn’t prepared. I’d been expecting it for days. Something about the confiding look in his soft gray eyes, as if he wanted to spill all his troubles out for me to hear.

“You are,” I whispered. “You’re stronger than you know.”  _ And you’re beautiful, oh, Thomas, you’re so fucking beautiful. _

He leaned against me, resting his head on my shoulder, and let out a sigh. “I’m not. Fighting off a few tanks isn’t the same as—as rebuilding the tradition of English wizardry. When I think about it I’m so sad I could slit my wrists.”

“Please don’t. And you don’t have to rebuild anything.” I was sure of this. That was my job, in the future. “All you have to do is look after London, make sure the libraries stay safe, and protect people from things like vampires when the police need your help.”

He looked at me quickly when I said ‘libraries,’ but didn’t say anything. I felt him weighing something, shifting things around in his mind, examining them. But in the end he didn’t speak, just lay back against my shoulder. He was so trusting, so young compared to the man I knew, who would never have taken such an intimate position with another man.

Unless, for all I knew, he did. Perhaps this was normal for my ex-soldier mentor, to lie next to another man quietly in bed, sharing secrets and trying to make the night less horribly alone. Standards of intimacy and friendship had changed over time, and this might have been pretty normal for him.

Or maybe it was the other sort of intimacy, after all.

“Peter,” said Thomas softly. And I heard so much in that one word that my breath caught. He reached over and took my free hand, holding it carefully in his own, with a light squeeze. “You could stay. You could help me. They can’t possibly need you more in the future.”

I was very much afraid he was right. The erection was back and rarin’ to raise some hell, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t maintain my spell. I snapped it off quickly, and turned to him. There was an invitation in his gray eyes, very clear even in the low lighting of the room. He was lying next to me, holding my hand, looking hopeful at the prospect of a kiss. Or perhaps a kiss and a good shag, as well.

I groaned. “Thomas.” 

He looked away quickly, ashamed. He pulled his hand free, and started to get up, the rigid line of his thin back showing his humiliation. 

“Thomas.” I recaptured his hand and pulled him gently but firmly back down to me. He let himself be drawn to me, although he tried not to seem too eager, and he kept his face turned away.

“I don’t think I can,” I told him. “I think I have to go back.” From the hallucination or the past, I still didn’t know which, but it felt very real just now. I stroked a hand down the back of his wrist, and he shivered. He still wouldn’t look at me.

“You could help,” he said, voice wavering. “You—you’re good at things.”

“So are you.” I pulled him to me, and into my arms, and he turned in time to get his kiss. His mouth was trembling a little, and his breath was fast, and he felt soft in my arms, despite being too thin. It was something about the way he relaxed into my hold, going soft and sweet and kissable.

I suppose I’d known Nightingale wasn’t exactly the forceful butch type, but it still surprised me just how he was when being held and kissed. It was like he wanted me to guide the way, and he was not going to take charge no matter what. Taking my hand had exhausted his bravery stores, and now, though he wanted to be kissed very much, it was definitely up to me to lead.

For a moment, I tried to reconcile my grave and professional boss with the soft and willing twink in my arms, and then it was gone, and there was only  _ now _ , hugging him to me and feeling his body against mine, running my hands down him and hearing his quiet sigh as I finally got it right.

It felt good to touch him. We were both trembling a little as I began to undress him. “Is this all right?” I made sure to ask, because consent should never be assumed, especially from repressed gay men in post-war London.

“Yes please,” he said, fiddling with my buttons, keeping his face lowered. 

I raised his chin and kissed him again, and then again, till he relaxed. He rubbed his cheek against my face like an affectionate cat. “It’s been a while,” he told me hoarsely. We were both really hard, should have been going for it like wildcats, but it was fragile and unfamiliar ground for both of us.

"That's fine. Me too."

Nightingale was very quiet. I could feel his tension and hope, mixed with lust and want and a terribly shy sort of agony, that I would have to actually look at him naked and see him vulnerable and maybe not want him after all. 

I was as gentle as I could be, undressing him. I kissed him here and there, and on his scars, taking my time. He was a wreck by the time we were both unclothed, but he was the quietest wreck I’d ever had in my bed, silent to the point where he wouldn’t even whisper now. His control in that area was extraordinary, if not in any other.

After, I held him on my chest, running my hands down his sides, and he put his face against the side of my neck and sighed. I felt his smile when he kissed the skin there, the only place he could reach without moving.

I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I’d never hurt him. I was afraid it was the sex talking. Besides, I almost certainly would hurt him. I couldn’t stay forever, whatever he thought.

#

He fell asleep, but only for a few moments, and excused himself in a politely neurotic way when he got up. He redressed himself completely, fingers trembling only a little from cold. I wondered if Molly was going to barge through eyes blazing any moment, furious with me for taking his virginity.

Though it probably hadn’t been that.

He gave me a quick, sweet smile and another kiss before leaving, but he was in a hurry to go. I couldn’t help thinking he’d regret it in the morning, but I was too tired to stay awake and worry about it.

Over breakfast, we were very civil to one another. At first he was vague and friendly and overly normal, and wouldn’t meet my gaze, but when he finally did...his gray eyes were shining, happy and triumphant and shy and sparkling, all at once. Oh. This was how it was for him: a huge triumph, but not something to talk about. He was incredibly happy to see me, and to be normal together at breakfast, and to know we’d had sex and hadn’t regretted it.

After that it was hard to keep our hands off one another. Between one thing and another, he was in my bed—or I was in his—almost every day, and sometimes more than once. Occasionally we stayed together all night, actually sleeping after sex, neither one of us feeling the need to run.

He didn’t ask me to stay again, but I had the feeling he was counting on it, or at least hoping for the best. To be honest, it felt so good to me, holding him, having him, that it was difficult to concentrate on anything else.

We had a lot of free time, and a lot of motivation to practice sex techniques. He was very willing to learn anything he didn’t already know, and extraordinarily giving. 

We didn’t have condoms, but I guess neither one of us let that bother us. There were lots of things we could do without them, and I consoled myself with the fact that Nightingale probably didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease that was particularly bad, if any, because he’d survived unscathed into the future, and as for me, I get tested regularly as part of being with the Met, plus I’m always careful. So between one thing and another, we did just about everything. He wouldn’t ever lose his cool enough to make a sound, but he was passionate and intense and whimsical and gentle and kind. He was so very kind, just as he’d always been.

When it was just the two of us, exploring and loving and naked, he seemed more like his real self, less tormented by memories and decisions. He seemed free, then. Though sometimes, when we stayed together all night, he woke up shaking or even cried out. His composure slipped, letting me see glimpses of the horrors that he might never forget. I held him then, as long as he wanted, unless he couldn’t stand to be touched at all.

#

Of course, the idea of being under Folly Arrest didn’t last long. Thomas wasn’t the sort to fuck a prisoner, and he thought of me as his equal with magic, and trusted me with helping to look after London Town. 

We went out together for the first time to deal with vampires, of course. He was so clearly nervous that I wished I could do it alone, but there was no way. I didn’t know the city very well at all, or his contacts, and probably wouldn’t be let into a white neighbourhood at all. 

So it was the two of us, his nerves steady in the moment, battle-hardened Thomas, but a wreck before and after. Me, with no war experience at all but plenty of experience dealing with unnatural baddies. Well, we got the job done, and that’s all that could be said for that.

It was a UXB, naturally, that we blamed for the vampire's nest destruction. What a shame, must have been missed during the war. Such things were common then. I wondered, though, just how often they were blamed for things like this.

As I got stronger and Thomas fell more in love with me, he liked to go out together and do things. A walk at night, along a pier, to listen to the river lapping. A trip to the cinema. A meal at one of his favourite restaurants. There were places that didn’t want to serve me, but Thomas was respected enough that they usually would. And if not, he stopped going there altogether and let it be known why.

We were nothing but friends in public, of course—more was still illegal—but I wondered how anyone could miss it, the way his eyes shone when he looked at me. It was such a look of triumph and love, as if he’d finally found his reason to live.

Molly was...not exactly happy, but resigned. I had some use after all, I supposed, if I could make Himself smile.

If he guessed he'd been the one to train me, he never let on. But I suspected that, no matter how well he knew  _ signare _ and could recognise when someone had been taught by one he knew, he didn't know how to recognise his own mark on me, nor would it have occurred to him to check. I'd certainly had plenty of time to develop my own style, after all.

I never told him he’d been my teacher, or that he stopped aging, or anything at all about the future if I could help it. Not that he spent much time wondering, or I spent much time holding my tongue. We were simply happy, in the here and now, in a world that was struggling to rebuild and survive.

In a world with the magic thinning and drifting away and everything changing yet again, we thrived.

I never actually made the decision to stay with him. I just stopped looking very hard for ways to go home. 

#

"Peter," said Thomas quietly, from where he rested in the crook of my arm. He was really much more of a cuddler than I'd expected. 

"Yes, Thomas?" I wanted to kiss him, but I wanted more not to move at all.

He hesitated. “I do hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”

I agreed that I also hoped that, and hid a goofy smile from him. I was pretty sure he’d been about to say he loved me. I felt the same, but, well, I guess we were both a little reticent to say it. For me, I felt like it wouldn’t count unless I said it spontaneously, when we weren’t both hot and panting from some amazing sex. I'm not sure what it was for him, other than being repressed and English.

Later, I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have been so precious about it.

He was still a bit shy about his body, and would always try to be covered up both immediately before and immediately after intimacy. Whoever had convinced him he had to be completely quiet during sex, and never let on afterwards that they'd been intimate at all, had probably also helped him develop a finely tune shame in his own naked form: too skinny, too pale, too this, too that. But he was beautiful to me, and he was growing stronger all the time. The scars hurt to think about, but they weren't ugly, and didn't bother me for aesthetic reasons; I just hated to think of him hurting and alone.

Maybe it wasn’t something any one person taught him, just what he’d learned from growing up in this era. This ‘modern world’ still seemed positively primitive to me sometimes.

We travelled more than one would expect, the two of us. There were things outside London that needed tended to, more than I'd realized, and occasionally he wanted me to meet someone who had broken his wand and given up magic. It was rarely a fun time for them, reminiscing, but he felt it was important to stay in touch. Neither of us said it directly, but it was important to remind the veterans they weren't alone. 

In the three months I stayed with Thomas, and Old London, two more of these old colleagues offed themselves. It hurt Thomas unbearably, and he grew so dispirited he'd have stayed indoors and closed all the still-hanging air raid curtains, if I'd let him. But I didn't. 

I made him go for walks, Molly and I insisted he eat, and keep regular hours. Eventually the horror of it would pass enough that he could survive. But it was not easy, and I didn't know how he would have borne it without me and Molly. Molly cared for him deeply, but I didn't think she could insist he go for walks, or take a picnic down to the nearest countryside stream, or anything of the sort. She cared deeply...but she couldn't fix it. 

I couldn't, either, of course, but he had more of a motivation to go along with what I suggested, you could say.

I'd never really had a boyfriend before. Not long term, not like this. Not anything and everything, sleep together all night, legit boyfriends. It was kind of a revelation to me. Thomas's finely tuned sense of quiet propriety only made me sad when I thought about it too hard. I was a friend and colleague outside the Folly; inside he loved me so desperately I could never think for even a moment that he was ashamed of me.

I loved him, too, and gradually the shame I felt about that—not about him, never about him—began to recede. It started to feel  _ right _ being with him, that this was the real Thomas and perhaps everything else had been a dream, long ago.

It was true I still knew far too much about the future, but in the day to day, that was surprisingly not terribly helpful. I might know broad trends and specific inventions, but I didn't know the exact dates of a lot of things (that would teach me not to pay attention in school!), and to be honest, even the things I did know pretty clearly might be one big thing per year, or something. If I should be here long enough to let any of my tech knowledge hit the fan, no doubt we could make a fortune on the stock market, but Thomas said there really wasn't any need, the Folly had plenty of funds, and it didn't sound quite cricket.

I agreed that I probably shouldn't use my knowledge of the future for insider trading, and then had to explain to him what insider trading was.

"I thought they just called those hot tips," said Thomas.

He really was as vague about the world now as he sometimes was in the future. 

In some ways, the war had used him up. He hadn't had a lot left for other things, and probably wouldn't for some time. It had broken them all, and some, like Thomas, had survived. He would change and grow and never be the same, but at least he was here, alive and real. 

If I could have carried some of his burden, the days when he looked out the window and saw nothing of the present, and there was no joy but only starkness and pain on his face, I would have. I'd have turned back the clock and done anything to fix it if I could. Instead I could only be there for him, walk alongside him till he was ready to be in the here and now again, till he could face happiness, and survival, and keep calm and carry on living, basically.

I was going to help him build the Folly, take care of all the agreements, protect London, and stay alive. I was ready to take on half the burden, and more when he was down for the count. I was ready, and I’d started. We’d made a good go of it, working together during the day, and being together at night. 

We were going to build the Folly up strong again, starting over and not giving up. We’d find some good young apprentices to train, so the Folly wouldn’t be undermanned for the next seventy odd years. We’d set things in order, protect London from dark forces and...stay together forever. Or at least as long as I lived, before he started aging backwards and outlived me. I tried not to think about that part.

It was probably a good thing that my parents hadn’t been born yet, because I'm not sure I'd have been able to resist the temptation to look them up, and that could definitely have messed with the timeline. I wasn’t sure I didn’t want to mess with it, though. If we could stop some of the Little Crocodiles before they became full blown monsters, well, that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

And then one day we were checking on a possible demon trap, and my life went pear-shaped once again as I was blown back to the future, and away from my Thomas.

#

I didn’t notice at first. One moment we were talking, carefully working our way around the possible magical detonation device, and that strange sort of silent explosion happened again, and then...nothing.

The next thing I knew, I hear the unmistakable warble of blues and twos. I’d gone back to the future, and didn’t my head hurt like an actual bomb had gone off inside it?

My first thoughts were mostly  _ augh, pain _ , and more  _ augh, pain _ . Because it really fucking hurt, okay? But the next ones I could spare were about how I'd left Thomas behind, and I hadn’t meant to do that, and the frozen horror on his face as I'd disappeared.

At least, I can’t know exactly what it looked like to him, but it felt to me like I was disappearing. I hadn’t meant to leave him, and now I had. Maybe it was supposed to happen, but that was pure bollocks to my point of view. The world didn’t work on supposed-to's; shit just happened. He’d needed me there more than Nightingale needed me here, and I’d been willing to give up everything to stay with him.

And now I couldn’t.

I passed out in the ambulance, and woke up with Nightingale sitting beside me rather primly on a plastic chair in hospital. 

“Hello, Peter,” said Thomas, and I knew that he knew. It hadn’t been a hallucination, it hadn’t been a parallel universe: I’d gone into the past and fucked up my very own Nightingale’s life. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

He’d kept it secret all this time. He’d known, and I hadn’t, and how it must have hurt him to watch me running after everyone else and falling in love and getting my heart broken, and not wanting to see him as anything but boss and governor and teacher...and sometimes friend. I thought of all the ways he’d gently withdrawn when I needed him to. I’d been very selfish, but I hadn’t known.

“Thomas.” I reached out, and took his hand. He held it. His smile was thin and soft and patient, as he’d been so patient with me always. His expression expected nothing, demanded nothing, was simply glad I was alive.

Somehow, he’d forgiven me, and I didn’t know how to handle that just now.

But I couldn’t speak more than that one word anyway. I had to sleep a lot more before we could have that conversation, or I could even get out of bed. Time travel takes it out of a man, apparently. Well, at least explosion-powered time travel does.

I wondered how Doctor Who could stand it. But then, he had the TARDIS. 

#

I was in hospital three days, and then was allowed to go home to the Folly, where Thomas puttered around and Molly cooked overly-large meals that I’d never be able to consume half of. She must have known about me being in the past, too, but neither of them had ever said.

I finally brought it up, when I was able to stay awake for more than five minutes at a time. I let it be known that he and Molly must've figured it out at some point: that I was future-Peter and past-Peter, one and the same.

"Of course." He nodded briefly. “We agreed not to talk about it, once you became my apprentice. I never really believed you about being from the future back then, you know,” confided Thomas. “I was far too well brought up to tell you you were mad, and anyway, I felt half mad myself most of the time in those days. Afterwards, sometimes I thought I'd invented you. That you couldn’t possibly be real. You left me,” he said softly, and the echo of the pain was still there in his voice. “I know you didn’t mean to, but it was hard for a bit.”

Hard for a bit was probably the understatement of the year, even considering this was Thomas talking.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

"Quite all right. Wasn't your fault, not a bit of it."

We were both silent a moment, a painful moment. Then he gave himself a small shake and went on. “Then one day I stopped aging, and went backwards a few decades, and I realized I had better apply myself to finding an apprentice unless I wanted to be stuck here for good, always taking care of London, always in charge.”

“I’d rather hope you were.”

His smile was sad, but he didn’t contradict me. He had his own reasons for not wanting to live forever.

“And then I saw you one night, interviewing ghosts, and I thought, it’s Peter, he’s come back to me. But you hadn’t. It was our first meeting, and you were so young—so very young. I knew then that there had been some truth to the time travel, as little sense as it made. But what does make sense in this line of work? One takes the rough with the smooth, I suppose."

Maybe, but that had to have been pretty damned rough for him. If I thought I had a moral dilemma about being attracted to him, how much he have felt: 

He went on. "And your time in the past did get me through some of the worst of it back in the forties. I am quite grateful, even if...even if it was quite bad again afterwards.” He met my gaze bravely. 

I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried; my mouth was very dry and I was conscious of a strong tendency to burst into tears, if I so much as breathed wrong.

“Then I had to train you. You were my Peter—if younger and more headstrong and untrained—but I wasn’t your Thomas. You needed me to be a teacher and protector, and not a friend or—or more than a friend.” Was that the faintest blush on his cheeks? He ducked his head. “So I did my best. And it was a long, long time. You know me, Peter, I’m not so terribly good at teaching. But I did try.”

“You did...you did very well, and you know it,” I managed in a strange, croaking voice that hurt.

He bobbed his head once. “Thank you, Peter. That means...a great deal. You see, when you came back to me...back then...you seemed so strong and certain and  _ brave _ . When you taught me spells I could only marvel at your skills. Well, everything about you, really. And then later...after...you were so very young, and I was so, so old. And that...that is just how it was. It’s never really changed. You couldn’t actually catch up. I was a fool for thinking that would ever happen. But we were something to each other once, and for that I am forever grateful.” 

He met my gaze then, an echo of the brave, gray-eyed man I’d loved, the same man, the same always, despite his changes. He was so terribly brave. “It is quite all right, Peter. I survived and muddled through. Thank you for being so kind to me when I needed you. I hope we can still be friends of a sort, now.”

I stopped him at that. Did he really think that was the end of it? If so he didn’t know Peter Grant as well as he fucking thought.

I kissed him full on the mouth, and at first he was too startled to kiss me back. And then, after a moment, he wasn’t. He dropped his cane, and neither of us noticed. 

He was my Thomas still. He was always my Thomas, and I wasn’t letting him go again.

We didn't stop kissing. I never wanted to stop. Then after bit we had to, so we could do more than kiss: undress, bed, sex.

He was almost as shy as he’d been the first time, and it had been a long time for him since then, a lifetime or more. I had to remind myself to go slow, to comfort him from his insecurities. As well as not overdo it and end up on bed rest again myself.

“Peter, are you certain?” he asked more than once, and I had to tell him that yes, I was, and I'd been thinking about this even before getting Doctor Who’d into the past, and could we get on with things, please?

Nightingale was, always would be, a consummately attentive lover. I'm not gonna lie, it felt really good to be back in his arms, back in his bed. 

We stayed there a long time.

In the morning, after we rolled out, took care of hygiene, and went down to breakfast—all of it surprisingly less awkward than I’d expected—we discussed the timeline over kedgeree, eggs, sausages, muffins, toast, marmalade, and jam. 

“I wonder if anything’s changed,” said Nightingale, who had a hearty appetite. He waved a fork at me. “We should compare notes.”

“Yeah, but probably any changes I made accidentally to the timeline affected me already, so I don’t even remember any other. I know that’s not how it happens in movies, but wouldn’t it violate some sort of cosmic law if something was different, and I remembered it another way?”

“It’s an interesting discussion,” agreed Thomas. “And you could certainly focus on it a bit too hard till you made yourself believe there were small inconsistencies that were, perhaps, only things you remembered wrongly or didn't know about before.”

I agreed not to overthink it. After all, whatever changed—and I’d tried my best not to change things—I’d grown up with the timeline that way, and lived through it, and got to the same place again so that it all happened and I was kicked back in time. Thomas had kept things the same by not revealing to me what happened. It was one of those loops.

“But if I find out the Eiffel Tower is blue or something, I’m not going to buy the 'no differences' thing.”

Thomas gave me a bland look. “But it’s always been blue, hasn’t it?”

I laughed and tossed a muffin at him. It was good to see him smile.

After that we moved on to more serious topics of conversation. 

The Time Trap issue was a big one. There was nothing in the literature about it that we’d been able to find, either of us, researching in different eras, and that meant it needed study more than ever. But clearly, they were rare and not safe enough to get close enough to study. It was, said Thomas, quite surprising I’d survived such a violent encounter with a time bomb. 

"Perhaps," he suggest, "someone sacrificed clocks to make it. Quite a number of clocks."

"Clock torture. Yeah. Seriously, haven't you thought of anything in all this time?"

“It did occur to me that it might be from the War, a disused thing that we didn’t discover at the time, because if it went off, people disappeared, but that was of course natural in a war.” 

And anyone who went to the past had either survived and blended in, he suspected, or been written off as mad, or died on the way. “After all, the wizards were rather too busy with other things to investigate odd occurrences at the time, so if anything was reported, it never got to the Folly library.”

I thought about that, and agreed it made sense. “We’ll have to be careful in future, though,” I said.

“Or in the past,” said Nightingale blandly.

After we finished breakfast, we had some urgent business to tend to back in his bedroom. 

He was gentle with me, marvelling at how much I’d stayed the same, and how different it was anyway. “I rather looked up to you then,” he confessed. “You seemed so self-assured and not at all broken.”

“But now you know all my faults,” I told him.

“It is an adjustment, to be sure.” He kissed my forehead tenderly, and I gripped his upper arm.

“It must have been uncomfortable to see me dating all those women. I'm sorry you had to see that.”

He shrugged, as if the pain he’d had to bear was nothing much. “I was used to the idea by then,” he said quietly. “I’ve never been terribly good at noble gestures, but even I could see you deserved to be happy.”

I took his hand impulsively. I couldn’t really see what he should have done differently, either. It definitely wouldn’t have worked for us to hook up right away. It could have gone so wrong. We’d needed to be on more of an equal footing, and the weight of the entire Folly responsibilities on our shoulders and my education had been a pretty big deal.

I hoped I hadn’t made him too miserable. I could see in his eyes he still couldn’t quite believe it, this was like a dream to him, and he would not have been surprised to wake up at any time. 

I gave his hand a good squeeze. I loved him so. And one of these days, I was finally going to tell him that. Even though I suspected he already knew.

“That’s a dirty lie about you not being good at noble gestures. That’s pretty much all you do, Thomas.” 

“Nonsense,” said Nightingale, and squeezed my hand back. His eyes shown bright as a bird’s, and glad to be alive.

Maybe I should tell him now. After all, I didn’t really know how long either of us had. “I really was into you before I got thrown back. I just didn’t know how to feel about it, and I thought you’d be angry or insulted.”

He laughed softly. “I was quite brazen about it when I was younger though, wasn’t I? Practically flung myself into your arms, if I recall.”

“You were a shy little twink. I doubt you’ve ever been brazen in your life.”

“Twink?!” said Nightingale, drawing back a bit. "I—I can hardly dignify that with an answer. I was still older than you are now, by the way.”

He was  _ such _ a twink. “You should own it. It’s not an insult.” I kissed him enough that he relaxed again. “By the way? Thought I should tell you I love you.”

“Thank you, Peter. I’ll take it under advisement,” he said sternly, but his eyes danced.

“And?” I said.

“And what?”

“Now you say it back, Mr. Magic Man.” I poked him lightly in the side, pleased that he wasn’t as skinny as he used to be, though he’d always be a slim, elegant man. 

“You know very well I love you, Peter. I have for quite some time.” He was blushing again, and really, of all the things to be embarrassed about. He couldn’t even meet my gaze just now.

I pulled him gently back into my arms, and comforted him the way I best knew how.

“I won’t be going anywhere again, Thomas. I’m sorry about all of it, but we’re here now, and we can go forward. Let’s make it the best future we can.”

“I think we already have,” said Nightingale, holding himself close to me, holding himself rather still. “I’m not sure I’d be here if it wasn’t for you, back then when I needed you, and...and again later, when you needed me to teach you.”

“We had such big plans in the past. Pity none of them worked out.”

“MRIs turned out to be excellent. And I muddled through somehow. You’re here now, and really, I couldn’t ask for more.”

I kissed him again, long and slow, not having any more words just then. 

We didn’t talk much after that for a while. 

He fell asleep first, and I stayed close, not moving so I wouldn’t disturb him. 

Somehow, despite everything that had gone wrong and hurt and taken so long to figure out, this felt just right. This slim and gentle man with so much hidden power, trusting himself to me, safe in my embrace. 

My Thomas. I loved him so.

  
  


the end

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this several years ago. I'm posting it now, in character or not. I have the virus and don't give as many shits right now.


End file.
